What things are you thinking about positively or negatively, and why? If we shift the game from which process to which investment what would really make an impact for your product, company, or business. Join us on May 4th and let’s talk about automation investments rather than processes.

Speakers

Test automation is experiencing some unfortunate backlash. Many of the objections come from misunderstanding the purpose of techniques like TDD. There also seems to be a false dichotomy between “testing” and “checking”. This talk will explore the current state of thinking about test automation, and explain how we can approach it as a creative, thoughtful, high-value activity.

Jeff is an internationally recognized IT consultant and design thinking practitioner. He is known throughout the DevOps community, especially for introducing the importance of empathy in building effective DevOps practices. Jeff has nearly 30 years of experience in software development, QA, and operations, and has led projects for Fortune 500 enterprises, major technology companies, software service startups, and media conglomerates. He is the author of Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT In the Digital Service Economy, and is a highly respected teacher, writer, and speaker on topics across the Agile/DevOps/Design Thinking spectrum.

Jon is an engineer at Highrise HQ, a subsidiary of Basecamp, where he’s been resurrecting one of the best small business CRMs. He will talk about building Highrise as a 6 person team and how it wouldn’t be possible without automation. Prior to Highrise he worked at Sport Ngin. There he was part of the development team and worked to architecture, execute that architecture and lead others to do the same.

Not every engineer has the opportunity to work with bespoke software. When you find yourself working with complex packaged software, implementing the practices of configuration management and continuous delivery can be daunting. Join Naomi Reeves from Target as she talks about the journey her team took to implement configuration management for SharePoint and the lessons they learned along the way.

Naomi Reeves is an infrastructure engineer at Target who got her start in technology as the geek in the business unit trying to automate all the painful processes and acted as the liaison to IT. Since joining a more traditional IT team, she’s been focused on the operational aspects of Target’s SharePoint infrastructure. She lives in Minneapolis with her Siberian Husky, and in her spare time can be found knitting or hacking her house.